July 4th 2023.
Today the National Health Service celebrates its 75th birthday, a milestone in the history of the UK. However, some of the same issues that faced the service when it first formed remain.
John Edwards, the parliamentary secretary to the Ministry of Health at the time of the launch of the NHS, spoke of the imperfections of the service. He said, “No miracle will happen when the new health services start on July 5. There are many out-of-date buildings and shortages in equipment and staff, and there will be 60,000 beds which it will be impossible to use because there are not enough nurses.”
It is true that some of the buildings used by the NHS are in a bad way, with a maintenance backlog of £10.2 billion in England alone. This covers everything from leaky gutters to faulty lifts and the fabric of the buildings themselves. This backlog, without proper investment, has a detrimental effect on the quality of care and patient safety.
Equipment shortages are still an issue for the NHS, with supply issue alerts for certain branded products from biopsy needles to feeding tubes to surgical scrubs. Long-running supply issues with blood collection equipment, shortages of vital medicines to treat menopause symptoms and a certain type of antibiotic are ongoing issues.
Staff shortages are also still a problem, with an estimated 40,096 nurse vacancies across the NHS in England. The new NHS Long Term Workforce Plan was issued last week and sets out how the Government intends to boost the workforce, including 170,000 more nurses by 2037.
It is clear that although the NHS has come a long way since its launch 75 years ago, there is still much work to be done to ensure that the service is able to provide the highest quality of care.
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